by Erik Brady, USA TODAY Sports

by Erik Brady, USA TODAY Sports

Sons who play basketball for their fathers understand how it works: When Dad tells you to take out the trash, you're free to roll your eyes, but when Coach tells you to run a lap, you'd best get rolling.

Doug McDermott, at first, had trouble discerning the difference between his father's voice as his father and his father's voice as his coach at Creighton University.

"It took him some time to adjust," Greg McDermott says, "but now he's incredibly coachable."

So much so that the junior forward is the nation's second-leading scorer at 23.4 points per game and one of college basketball's best to play for his father since Pete Maravich was launching bombs in floppy socks at LSU in the 1960s.

"I don't even know what to say to that one," says Greg, whose Creighton team (24-7, 13-5) enters Thursday's Missouri Valley Conference Tournament as the No. 1 seed. "There have been so many great father-son combinations through the years."

College basketball history is replete with them: Press and Pete Maravich, Al and Allie McGuire, Bob and Pat Knight.

This season, more than a half-dozen fathers are coaching their sons - the NCAA doesn't keep track - among the nearly 350 schools in Division I. Their stories are different in their particulars but strikingly similar in their broad strokes.

Last summer, at a basketball skills academy, Doug McDermott met Ray McCallum, who plays for his father at Detroit Mercy. They hit it off instantly. "We found out a lot of our stories match up," Doug says.

"It was really fun to talk to Doug," says McCallum, who's team holds the No 2 seed in this week's Horizon League Tournament. "You can always tell a coach's son. The way they play the game, the way they talk about the game. They have a high basketball IQ."

Billy Baron, who plays for his father Jim at Canisius, watched reams of McCallum on tape before Canisius played at Detroit this season (Detroit won 83-78 in late December). "We play a lot alike," Billy says, "like looking in a mirror."

Before Ron Hunter brought in son R.J. to play for him at Georgia State, Ron talked a great deal to the elder Ray McCallum about the joys and challenges of mixing off guards with offspring. That's typical: Coaches whose rosters intersect with their family trees tend to seek scouting reports from those who've gone before.

Jim Baron remembers talking about all this with the late Al McGuire years ago: "Al told me, 'Your son has to be the best player on the team, or the worst player on the team, can't be in between.' "

McDermott, McCallum, Hunter and Baron are their teams' best players. The secret is not acting like it.

"Doug's teammates, from day one, embraced him as one of the guys, not the coach's son," Greg McDermott says. "I think anyone watching us practice would have a hard time telling that Doug is my son. That's the way I want it, and the way he prefers it."

A small window

Allie McGuire remembers the recruiting trip he took to North Carolina in October of his senior year of high school.

"I got home and I said to my father, 'Looks like I'm going to North Carolina,' " Allie says. "And he said, 'Ah, it gets hot down there.' I said, 'Yeah, I know it gets hot down there, but that's the summer.' And he was like, 'Well, let's think about this. Let's not rush into this.' "

Then, Allie says, his father played his high card: " 'If you go there, your mother won't be able to see you play.' "

That's when Allie knew he'd be going to Marquette to play for dear old dad.

"I was so close to going to North Carolina," Allie says. "But I wound up playing for my father and I never questioned it. Your destiny is where you end up."

Allie started at guard as a sophomore, in an era when freshmen could not play varsity. George Frazier, another sophomore guard, thought he was just as good as Allie and told Al that. Al famously told Frazier that to beat out his kid he'd have to be better - or, in some versions, twice as good.

Allie takes an interest in watching coaches' sons and thinks they're often the kind of playmakers who see the game two chess moves ahead. "Even Maravich, with his 40 points every night, everyone remembers how he could pass," Allie says.

No one had to tell Pistol Pete to shoot more, but Al coaxed Allie: "Once, before a game, my father said, 'When you get to half court I want you to drop-kick the ball and see if you can make it.' At first I didn't know if he was serious. Then I realized what he meant: 'I want you to shoot.' "

Their time together as coach-player deepened their father-son bond for the rest of their lives. "It's such a small, little window, three years," Allie says. "You have to savor every moment."

Recruiting at the breakfast table

There's an old joke about why coaches who coach their sons have such a big recruiting advantage. The punch line: "I sleep with his mother."

Greg McDermott has heard that one. "Yeah," he says, "I've heard most of them."

And yet the truth is that it isn't always so easy to recruit the kid on the other side of the breakfast table. Doug was originally going to play at Northern Iowa, before his father left Iowa State for Creighton. And Billy Baron chose Virginia rather than play for his father at Rhode Island.

But Billy decided as a freshman to transfer to Rhode Island to play where his brother Jimmy had starred for their father. And then Billy wasn't sure what to do when his father was fired after last season.

"My father told me in the car and I'll never forget that moment," Billy says. "We cried for a while. "

It would get worse. His mother had open heart surgery weeks later. Billy's first inclination was to stay and play at Rhode Island. But, his mother says, he soon felt unwelcome there. Then he took visits to Providence and Purdue as college's version of a free agent, since sons of fired coaches typically get waivers to transfer without sitting out a year.

"Deciding what to do was hard for Billy," says Cindy Baron, his mother. "It was hard for all of us. Trying to work out that balance tore the family apart."

Billy remembers the turning point. His brother Jimmy, who plays pro basketball in Russia, sent an email with a link to a photo of the McCallums embracing after Detroit won last season's Horizon League championship and its automatic NCAA tournament bid.

"That's the one moment I missed out on playing for my father," Jimmy says. "Every day, I regret that. And I told Billy, 'You wanted to come from Virginia to play for dad, not play for Rhode Island.' That's the same decision I made to play for him, no matter where he would have been at. And I told Billy, 'This picture, this is what you want.' "

And so Billy chose Canisius, which is to say he chose his father, meaning he's gone from the Atlantic Coast to the Atlantic 10 to the Metro Atlantic, even with the Big Ten and Big East beckoning.

"That picture of Ray and his father really stuck with me," Billy says.

Double trouble

Theresa McDermott says watching games as a wife and as a mother can be double trouble.

"It makes me nervous as heck because it's not just your husband and his job but now it's your son and his career, too," she says. "So you have double stress and double intensity. It's great when you're winning, but when you lose it's a double loss."

And at home she's a double-agent.

"Sometimes Doug will vent to me and he knows I won't share that with Greg," she says. "Greg has always been good about not bringing work home. But once in a while he'll say, 'Your son didn't play good defense in practice.' "

She laughs and adds: "It's 'your son' when he does something wrong."

The joy, Greg says, is watching his son grow as a player and as a person; the trick is when to back off.

"As much as I love my father," Greg says, "I'm not sure I would have wanted to see him every day in college, so it's important that I give Doug some space."

Morgan State coach Todd Bozeman, when he's tough on his players, used to tell them, "My own kids don't like me sometimes." That line doesn't work as well now that son Blake plays for him.

Steve Alford played high school basketball for his father. "When I was a freshman and sophomore, they booed when he put me in," Alford says. "When I was a junior and senior, they booed when he took me out."

That sort of scrutiny steeled Alford for his playing career at Indiana and his coaching career at four stops, most recently at No. 11 New Mexico, where son Kory is a redshirt freshman and where son Bryce, a high school senior, will also play next year.

Kory is thinking about a career in coaching. Perhaps he will coach his own son some day, extending the Alford family business to a fourth generation.